North Star

by Hammond Innes

  We lay there all Saturday and nobody bothered us until a fishing boat came in late that afternoon. She had the letters LK and her number painted white on her bows, and instead of making for the pier, she headed straight for us, the crew on deck putting fenders out. I watched her come alongside, and as Henrik and Lars took her warps, I called down to the skipper to ask him where he came from, what he wanted.

  ‘From Scalloway,’ he said, leaning his head out of the wooden wheelhouse. ‘You’re Randall, are you? I’ve brought a Mr Stevens to see you.’ He said something over his shoulder and a man came out of the door at the back of the wheelhouse, a short man with thinning hair dressed in a dark suit. He looked up at me and I saw the steel-trap mouth, the hard unfriendly eyes, the slight cast of the eye. He didn’t ask permission to come on board, but went straight to the side and hauled himself up on to our deck. A moment later he was on the bridge facing me. Johan was there, and Henrik, too. We had been playing cribbage. ‘These two of your Norwegians?’ The same quiet voice, hard and flat, and the odd sidelong look of the left eye, ‘You should have put them ashore.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with you?’ My hands were clenched, my voice strained. ‘How did you know where to find me?’ I was remembering the cold-blooded way he had threatened me, wondering whether he thought I’d made a statement to the police as he stood there facing me, saying nothing. ‘What made you follow me out here?’

  ‘We’ll talk about that in your cabin.’ He turned abruptly and started down the companionway, then realized it was at the back of the bridge.

  ‘I don’t want you on board.’ But he had already disappeared inside, and the fishing boat had recovered her warps and was going astern. I watched her sheer away from our side and head for the pier, the name Island Girl on her stern, then I followed him to my cabin. He was sitting on my bunk with a packet of cigarettes in his hand. He didn’t offer me one this time. ‘Shut the door.’ He waved me to the single upright chair. ‘I take it you know something about the background of this drilling operation. Have you met Villiers?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you’ve heard of him – you know the way he operates, the sort of man he is?’

  ‘I know he runs a very successful finance company.’

  ‘You admire success?’ It wasn’t a question, more a sneer, the word success made to sound obscene. ‘He makes money – at the expense of others, of course. And ultimately it’s the workers who suffer.’

  ‘You don’t need to give me the propaganda line.’

  ‘No?’ He was watching me as he took a cigarette out of the packet and lit it. ‘Just thought I’d remind you, that’s all. It’s some time since you were a shipyard worker. You were one of the leaders then. A shop floor convener with a gift for turning on the heat when it was needed.’ He paused, drawing on his cigarette. Then he said, ‘Before that you worked as a journalist in the City. You didn’t like it, did you?’

  ‘There are two sides to everything,’ I said, wondering where this was leading.

  He smiled. ‘Seeing things two ways can be confusing.’

  ‘You didn’t come out here in a fishing boat to tell me that.’

  ‘No. But you’ve been confused for some time, and that’s a pity. You’re in a very unique position at the moment. Unique from our point of view.’ He was staring at me as though trying to make up his mind, and I wasn’t certain which of his eyes was focused on my face. ‘But then if you weren’t confused, you wouldn’t be here, would you?’ He said it reflectively, the sound of the radio on the bridge almost drowning his words. ‘You wouldn’t have come to Shetland, trying to find out about your father, and landed yourself with this trawler.’

  So it was the trawler that had brought him here. ‘What’s the trawler got to do with it?’

  But he ignored my question. ‘Villiers now,’ he murmured. ‘Would you say Villiers is typical of the City?’

  ‘One aspect of it, yes. But not the City as a whole. That’s pretty mundane.’

  ‘Of course. Banks and insurance and unit trusts.’ He smiled quietly to himself. ‘But that’s not how the public sees it. All they read about is the property developers, the land speculators, the ones that hit the headlines getting rich too quick, while workers are declared redundant or fight management and government for increased wages that never catch up with inflation. Look at Villiers, with his finance companies and his villa in Bermuda, as well as his Hampshire estate, two aircraft and a flat in Belgravia. That’s the capitalist image the public understands. Girls, parties, villas abroad – and who pays? They do in the end.’ He leaned suddenly forward. ‘That’s why we’re interested in Villiers. The face of capitalism at its ugliest.’

  He was very different from the militants I had met – no warmth, and talking in clichés. ‘Villiers is happily married with two kids,’ I said wearily. ‘And he works –’

  ‘I thought you said you’d never met him?’ He was still leaning forward, his eyes gone hard.

  ‘I haven’t. But I read the newspapers.’

  ‘I see.’ He stared at his cigarette, his mouth a thin line. ‘You are confused, aren’t you?’ He gave a little shrug. ‘Well, it can’t be helped. Villiers is very suitable to our purpose. And so are you. It doesn’t really matter that you think him so commendable.’

  ‘I didn’t say that. You’re twisting my words.’

  A silence then, a long, uncomfortable silence. Finally he said, speaking slowly, ‘It may help you to understand the importance we attach to this if I fill you in on the background. You know, of course, that we can call on the services of quite a few journalists, wittingly or unwittingly. Recently we have had a very good man looking into the Villiers take-over technique and the companies he has grabbed. It’s the latest that concerns you, an offer by Villiers Finance and Industrial, known as VFI, for the whole of the capital of Neven-Clyde Shipping. The offer was very astutely timed – last January, when Neven-Clyde had just reported heavy losses on a harbour construction contract in Brazil.’

  ‘It’s of no interest to me,’ I said. ‘I’m running a trawler now.’

  He jabbed a cigarette at me. ‘You think you can escape after all these years?’ He was watching me, the slant of his eyes more disconcerting than ever. ‘It’s not as simple as that, Randall. We all have our backgrounds, and the past produces its own obligations.’ The hard mouth managed a smile. ‘As a boy you can run away to sea. Not as a man.’

  He leaned back slowly and his voice was quiet and relaxed as he continued: ‘Neven-Clyde’s trouble was that they diversified, mostly into fields where their expertise was limited. They lost money, and they lost the support of their shareholders. The VFI offer was declared unconditional on 14th March. The attraction for Villiers was the shipping offices in various parts of the world and the losses built up over the years, which he can now offset against profits for tax purposes. The construction business has already been sold off. N-C Ceramics is on the market. So, too, are N-C Textiles, a small company specializing in panties and bras with a factory in Belfast, N-C Plastics, producing dolls and garden furnishings, and N-C Musicals, a pop record company.’

  It took me back to my days as a journalist, the wheeling and dealing that was part of the background to life in the City. It had coloured all my thinking, affected my whole outlook. But now – it didn’t concern me now. Only the sea. The sea at least was clean, clear-cut, impersonal, without hate or greed or bitterness. An elemental force, nothing more, nothing complicated. But I couldn’t explain it to a man like this, his voice droning on: ‘All this is much too complicated to capture public imagination. Stripping, property-dealing, even redundancies – they’ve had it all before. And anyway a lot of it is above their heads. But an oil rig …’ He paused, his eyes watching for my reaction as he drew on his cigarette. ‘Two years ago Neven-Clyde bought their way into North Sea oil with the acquisition of a company called Star-Trion. Its only tangible asset was one of the first sea-going rigs built in this country – a rig called North Sta
r which they purchased secondhand. This is the rig that will be drilling here in Block 206. Star-Trion operated it as drilling contractors. But as far back as the 1971 auction they put in a bid for two areas west of Shetland. At that time the major oil companies were concentrating on the North Sea proper. North East Atlantic areas were regarded as hazardous for the rigs then available. Also, geophysically, they were not fully evaluated. Star-Trion got them both on a very low bid.’

  ‘Are you implying that the rig is unsafe in these waters?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I think so. Where they’re going to drill the sea is almost two hundred metres deep – about the limit for North Star. Certainly the public can be made to see it that way. Fishermen particularly, if the result was heavy oil pollution.’

  ‘Result of what?’ I demanded. ‘What the hell are you suggesting?’

  ‘A strike on board. That for a start.’

  ‘There’s never been a strike on a sea-going rig, not that I’ve heard.’

  ‘No – not yet, not a proper one.’ He drew slowly on his cigarette. ‘What did you think I meant?’

  ‘Anybody who can arrange for a man’s house to be deliberately set on fire –’

  ‘You were never in Northern Ireland, were you? Anyway, they didn’t know the little girl was in the house.’

  ‘Would it have made any difference if they had?’

  He shrugged, watching the smoke curling up from his cigarette. ‘You send those four Norwegians ashore and replace them with our men,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s all you have to do.’

  I shook my head, Garrard’s warning clear in my mind. ‘It’s not a strike you’re calling, it’s something else, isn’t it?’

  He raised his eyes and stared at me. ‘Is it your future you’re worrying about?’ He didn’t wait for me to reply but went straight on: ‘You’re wrong when you say there’s never been a strike on a North Sea rig. There was one last October, but the contractor managed to keep it out of the papers. They were Scots mainly, so he flew in two new drilling crews, all Americans. There was a fight on board and one or two men got hurt. But he got the strikers off his rig.’ He was smiling quietly to himself. The only trouble is nobody will work on the rig now, except foreigners, so it costs a lot more.’

  ‘What rig was that?’

  ‘Never mind what rig. We’ve infiltrated several drilling teams. As a result, we’ve got our foot in the door of three rigs, maybe four if North Star accepts our men as replacement for two roustabouts who’ve got into trouble ashore.’

  ‘Then why do you want your men on board my ship?’

  He looked at me, hesitating. Then he said, ‘I told you, North Star is an old rig and unsuitable for the North East Atlantic. If it breaks loose and drags … The threat of a disaster at sea is always news and we get a chance to publicize our demands on grounds of danger. Drillers would be glad of some publicity on rates of pay. The public thinks even a roustabout gets paid a fortune. He doesn’t. He works twelve hours on, twelve hours off and every other week he’s ashore. He doesn’t get paid for that, so you have to divide his weekly pay packet by two.’

  ‘And your men will ensure that the anchors drag, is that it?’

  He shrugged. ‘They’ll probably drag anyway.’

  ‘But you’re going to make sure they do.’ I stared at him. Who was he, this cold, hard little man, always working in the background? ‘That’s sabotage.’

  He didn’t deny it. All he said was, ‘Nobody’s going to get hurt.’

  ‘How do you know? How can you possibly know?’

  ‘When you’ve seen the size of the rig, you’ll realize it’s out of the question. But it will make the headlines, and then Villiers will be seen as a capitalist gambler operating with obsolete equipment in dangerous waters.’

  ‘It’s not your neck you’re risking,’ I said.

  ‘Nor yours.’ The flat, hard voice was suddenly sharp. ‘You send those four Norwegians ashore and replace them with our men. That’s all you have to do.’

  I shook my head, my hands sweating, my body cold inside. ‘There’s something more, isn’t there?’ That reference to Northern Ireland. He was cold-blooded enough for that, too. ‘There has to be something more, or you wouldn’t be going to all this trouble.’

  He stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Not for you. Not as we’ve planned it.’ He was watching me, and now the squint had a strangely menacing quality, so that I had the feeling that it was this slight physical disability – and it was only slight – that had warped him mentally. ‘A pay dispute, a halt to operations that would focus attention on the rig. And if we can involve Villiers directly, so much the better. Then, if the rig drags at the moment they strike oil –’ He shrugged. ‘A lot of ifs … But the seismic survey, completed just after Villiers took the company over, makes an oil strike a strong possibility.’ He was talking quietly, but there was an urgency in his voice, his mind locked on his plans. ‘Then we could have a major environmental disaster and Villiers would be branded as a man intent on making millions by cashing in on oil without any regard to the environment, or to the fishermen who earn a living by the sea.’ And he added, emphasizing his words, ‘He’s tailor-made to our purpose.’

  He paused then, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘I’ve told you more than I intended. But you would have to know in the end. And it’s better that it comes from me, so that you understand what is at stake.’ His head jerked forward. ‘Something else you should understand. Nothing – not you or anybody else – is going to stand in the way.’ His hand came down on the locker beside him. ‘Nothing. You hear? This ship of yours, and you the master of it – we’ll never have an opportunity as good as this again. You’re on charter out here for three months. In less than a month nobody will even notice you’re there. You’ll be accepted as part of the scenery.’ He got to his feet. ‘The first hole will take about five weeks to drill. That’s our information. I’ll send the replacement crew and the equipment we’ll need out by a local boat in about three weeks’ time.’

  I reminded him that Mrs Petersen was responsible for crew replacements. ‘You won’t get her to accept your men.’

  But he brushed that aside. ‘She’ll have no alternative. Sandford will see to it that your Norwegians don’t get their work permits, and with the pressure we’ll be putting on the fishing community, no Shetlander will volunteer.’

  I was standing facing him then, a deep void inside me. A small, insignificant little man with a cast in his eye, and I was afraid of him. Deep inside he had me scared. ‘Who are you?’ I asked him. A name didn’t matter. But where had he come from? What was his background? His face was blank, not a muscle moved. ‘That skipper said your name was Stevens,’ Even a name might make him seem more human.

  ‘Alf Stevens.’ The voice so quiet and that thin smile. It might just as well have been Bill Smith.

  ‘You realize the police know I’m here. An Inspector Garrard from London –’

  ‘They’ve nothing against you.’

  ‘They have my record, a dossier, several files.’

  He laughed. ‘It’s like I told you. The past sticks with you. There’s no escape.’ And with brutal frankness, he added, ‘They can’t charge you, not unless our witness talks. And he won’t do that so long as you co-operate. All right?’ He looked at me, one-eyed, the left squinting off into the corner where I had been sitting. ‘Now, if you’d sound two blasts on your siren …’ He turned to the door then, so sure of me apparently that he didn’t need an answer. It was that absolute blind assurance that turned my fear of him to anger.

  Two steps and I had him by the shoulder, spinning him round, my face close to his. ‘I could sail out of here, straight to Aberdeen, and hand you over.’

  ‘You could indeed.’ His face was without expression, no fear, nothing. ‘My word against yours and political power behind me. You can try it if you like, but you wouldn’t win.’

  ‘There’ll be fifty or more men on that rig. You expect me to endanger their lives …’
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br />   ‘I told you. Nobody is going to get hurt.’ He took my hand from his shoulder, looking at me as though I was somehow to be pitied. ‘Take after your father, don’t you?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I think you know. You’ve been making enquiries.’

  ‘I know he was brought out of Norway –’

  ‘He was compromised. And afterwards …’ He shrugged. ‘Rehabilitation can be a long process. Not many survived.’

  I stood there, rooted to the spot. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ My voice sounded strained, my mind gone numb. ‘He’s alive – is that what you’re saying?’

  He looked at me intently. ‘Would that make any difference?’ he asked softly. But I was too surprised, too shocked to say anything. ‘Suppose you were able to talk to him?’

  I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. Those lines from Browning, the little plaque – ‘It’s not true,’ I heard myself say and there was a tightness in my throat. ‘It’s not possible.’

  He laughed. ‘I think your Inspector Garrard would tell you differently.’ And he added, his voice gone hard again, ‘But you can’t go to him, can you? He knows too much about you. You can’t go to the police, anybody. So you do as we tell you. Otherwise, you’ll never know another moment’s peace. And that’s what you want, isn’t it? To be left alone.’ He nodded. ‘Well, after this you will be, so long as you co-operate.’ He stared at me a moment, then turned and went out of the cabin. I heard him ask Henrik to sound two blasts, the sound of his footsteps in the gangway, and I stood there, unable to move, unable to think.

  I didn’t go to the bridge until I heard the fishing boat alongside. He was already on board. He turned and looked at me, and then he disappeared into the wheelhouse and the boat pulled away from us. I watched as it steamed down Ham Voe, the tonk-tonk of its diesel echoing back until it disappeared beyond Baa Head. It was past six then and the crew were already feeding. I had mine on the bridge, alone, and afterwards I went to my bunk. But I didn’t get much sleep, and at 03.30 we got our anchor and left Foula for our rendezvous with North Star.